Tetanus antitoxin

Tetanus antitoxin is an antiserum that has been produced by actively immunizing an animal (e.g., a horse) with tetanus toxoid.
When a human

may have been exposed to spores of the tetanus bacillus (e.g. in a dirty puncture wound) and

has never or not for a long time (10 years) been actively immunized with tetanus toxoid,

the physician, fearing that disease symptoms may occur before the patient is able to mount an active immune response, will inject tetanus antitoxin in order to provide immediate protection.
The protection is short-lived, lasting only until the last of the injected antibodies have been catabolized.

Antivenoms

These antisera (raised in horses or sheep) provide immediate protection to people bitten by a venomous animal (e.g., a rattlesnake).

To avoid such problems, humans are often used as the source of passive antibodies.

Some immune globulin (IG) is prepared from the gamma globulin fraction of pooled plasma from the outdated blood of several thousand blood donors on the assumption that this large pool will contain good levels of antibodies against many common diseases such as

IG is also used to provide protection to boys with X-linked agammaglobulinemia, who are unable to manufacture antibodies because of a mutation in their single (because on their X chromosome) gene for Bruton's tyrosine kinase.

Some preparations of immune globulin are harvested from selected individual donors who have either recently recovered from the disease or who have been deliberately and intensively immunized against it. These are used to provide immediate protection against such diseases as

The recent need for an effective treatment for people with inhalational anthrax has led to the use of plasma donated by military personnel previously actively immunized with anthrax vaccine. Soon it should be possible to prepare a purified immune globulin from this plasma. Further down the road will be the use of antianthrax monoclonal antibodies.

Rh immune globulin (RhIg) or Rhogam is used to prevent Rh-negative mothers from becoming sensitized to the Rh antigen of their newborn child. [Discussion]